Monthly Archives: April 2020

In my experience, little kids aren’t real big on following rules and regulations. So what happens when parents bring their rugrats to the store – are the little darlings going to observe social distancing? Will we have to leash them to their parents?

Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Benett had this to say on the subject:

Here’s the thing: I’m a geezer myself, but it makes more sense, to me, to quarantine old farts like myself rather than 250 million (relatively) healthy young people.

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What no one seems to be talking about:

They don’t yet know if your pets can give you the virus. It’s possible that they can.

This does not bode well for the future of Fido.

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So, you’re going back to work. Lucky you.

You work in an office or a warehouse or wherever, and about half of your co-workers take the virus very seriously, but the other half think the country is overreacting.

Many of your co-workers ignore social-distancing protocol because they think it’s silly and, just like in pre-pandemic days, they like to get right in your face.

Now what?

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“Breakfast, as usual, is more essential than ever.” — Steve Cahillane (above)

I’m a bit repulsed by cereal companies or auto dealers trying to piggyback on the reputation of first-responders and other essential workers. I’m sorry, Kellogg’s honcho Steve Cahillane, but your fucking breakfast cereal is not “essential,” breakfast itself is not essential, and you are not essential.

And stop implying that nurses and EMTs are on your payroll.

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1. Exposure to heat and sunlight might quash the deadly coronavirus.

2. Cigarette smoking might protect you from complications engendered by the virus.

So … everything that battles the damn virus will also give you cancer.

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Killing Time in Self Isolation

Gran Torino

Like many of you, I’ve been watching a lot of TV. I rewatched The Hunt for Red October and Gran Torino. Both movies are dominated by the charisma of their stars, Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood, respectively.

We don’t have movie stars like Connery and Eastwood anymore.

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I’ve also been watching a lot of YouTube. Judging by the number of views they get, the big stars on YouTube are often cute girls with vapid personalities. Sure, they are fun to look at, but you also have to listen to them, which often involves much whining and complaining. Pictured below is a typical YouTube star, a chronic complainer named Taylor Skeens.

Taylor is unhappy with her new apartment. Taylor has ex-boyfriend issues. But you put up with her carping because Taylor has a fine ass:

Clint and Sean have done lots of promotional work for their movies, but never anything quite like that.

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I would be upset about Chris Cuomo and CNN faking Cuomo’s “quarantine,” but I stopped watching CNN a long time ago.

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Like you, I have been wondering how this lockdown might affect our nation’s strip clubs:

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Sorry (not sorry), but I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that I enjoy some of the news reports about people getting shamed – or even arrested – for violating social-distance rules.

Now at least some people understand what it’s like to be a smoker who gets busted for having the temerity to light up in a “no smoking” area.

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Trump’s Lies vs. Media Lies

Trump frequently lies. For example, he was clearly not being “sarcastic” with his comment the other day about injections.

The media also frequently lies. For example, contrary to what was reported, Trump did not advise anyone to inject anything; he was posing a question.

But the media deservedly catches more flak for its lies. Why is that?

Presidents are judged on their words and their actions. The media’s stock-in-trade is words and words only. So if people approve of Trump’s actions, he gets a pass on his words. But the media? No way, Jose.

Watching the news these days is like seeing the Titanic sink. The only questions are how fast will the country sink, who gets saved, and who finds a lifeboat. Guess who’s finding a lifeboat?

I’m just about to the point where I want every rich, famous, and powerful person in this country to be tossed overboard.

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You hate the media because it is a) too pro-Trump or b) too anti-Trump. I hate the media because when there is finally some good news for smokers, it’s ignored:

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I notice that our “essential” occupations tend to be jobs like truck driver and grocery-store clerk. Most white-collar jobs are “non-essential.” Guess which occupations get the fattest paychecks?

Speaking of checks … it’s been about a month now and I have yet to see any money from Uncle Sam. Have you?

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Fifteen years ago, I read a book called The Coming Generational Storm. That was, of course, long before this pandemic. Oh, boy.

Now we can look forward to a new war between the young and the old. We have dwindling resources; do we use them to secure the health of aging Boomers, or to secure the future for Millennials and Gen Z?

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I’ve poked fun at Tucker Carlson in the past, but the dude cranks out more provocative stories on a nightly basis than most other journalists do in a month.

Every weeknight, Carlson exposes some outrage, or some villain, that no one else seems to be covering. Everyone else is preoccupied with Trump, Pelosi, and other usual suspects.

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Hooray for Hollywood, which is teaming up with a pro-China organization (see yellow arrow, above) to fight the Wuhan virus. Apparently there are no other groups or charities our celebrities think can do a better job.

Netflix’s Ozark (above) might not be quite at the level of Breaking Bad, but its third season comes awfully close.

Third seasons (or fourth seasons, or second seasons) aren’t always so memorable. For example, I am in the process of falling out of love with Babylon Berlin and Money Heist, both of which are beginning to seem slow, repetitive, and bloated.

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Joe Biden’s mind has clearly left the building.

I don’t care how much you detest Trump; you can’t put someone with Biden’s level of senility in the Oval Office.

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Biggest personal frustrations during this lockdown: Where can I get a fucking mask, and when/where can I get fucking tested?

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Surgeon General Jerome Adams (above) looks like an eager-to-please 12-year-old rehearsing a classroom speech. Why did he discourage everyone from wearing masks?

Also, isn’t it awfully easy for our president, who can get tested as often as he likes, to tell the rest of us that wide-scale testing is “not necessary”?

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Mark Cuban keeps popping up on Fox News. But I have yet to hear anyone ask the Dallas Mavericks owner if he thinks the NBA should sever ties with China.

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Tucker Carlson’s description of the World Health Organization’s director-general (above):

“The head of W.H.O., Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is a buffoonish villain right out of a Saturday-morning cartoon.”

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Inspiring Words from Famous Americans:

“Give me liberty, or give me death!” – Patrick Henry

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” – John F. Kennedy

“We’ll see what happens!” – Donald J. Trump

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I’ve been critical of Trump today, but I don’t envy him his “biggest decision I’ve ever had to make” about when to re-open the economy.

The biggest decision I currently have to make is whether to keep using Kleenex to wipe myself or to go with the cheap-ass toilet paper I managed to find.

If you like your movies loaded with symbolism and metaphors, The Platform is piled high with none-too-subtle commentary on class warfare, capitalism, socialism, racism, and religion. All of that adds substance to the film, but the unpredictable plot is what held my interest in this Spanish thriller.

A man volunteers to spend six months in “the hole,” a concrete prison with hundreds of floors through which a food-filled platform descends on a daily basis – a rectangular slab piled high with consumables for the prisoners. The catch? Everyone on the upper floors pigs out, leaving nothing but scraps for the poor souls below. The Platform is often gross and always grim, but it kept me glued to the screen, wondering what fresh hell would be coming next. Release: 2019 Grade: B+

Perhaps David Geffen, Madonna, and other rich and famous jerks should sit down and read Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death (above). Especially Geffen, the billionaire who made the Instagram post below … before the backlash caused him to delete his account.

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I saw the above headline and was reminded of this Groucho Marx quote:

“One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don’t know.”

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I don’t know about you, but I’m growing tired of all these media reports about white-collar workers forced to work from home during this pandemic. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard news stories that refer to “everyone” working from home.

None of these idiots seem to realize that millions of Americans are not working from home. They aren’t working at all.

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Call me a homophobe if you must, but I can do without the male-on-male kissing scenes in Schitt’s Creek, which airs its final episode this week. I don’t expect gays to enjoy, say, Hugh Grant smooching Julia Roberts in a rom-com, so please don’t pressure me into (falsely) claiming that I dig seeing Dan Levy and Noah Reid locking lips in this show.

However … having said that, I can’t imagine a better public-relations show for gay acceptance than this Canadian sitcom. That’s because the characters played by Levy and Reid are so … damn … likable. You will like both of them, and you will want the best for them.

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WTF is this? Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, and Deborah Birx involved in some nefarious scheme to depopulate the world?

Problem is, the past month has been so surreal, so Twilight Zone-like, that it opens one’s mind to all sorts of other things, including conspiracy theories. So, Bill Gates and doctors Fauci and Birx are plotting to depopulate the world? Hey, we are all of us now Charlton Heston in The Omega Man, so anything seems possible.

As I type on this keyboard, we’re in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, and so any book depicting the culture and lifestyle of a particular region probably needs a caveat: Was it written post-plague or pre-plague?

In The Almost Nearly Perfect People, British expat Michael Booth chronicles Scandinavia — but the Scandinavia of 10 years ago, which might be very different from the Nordic region post-plague.

At any rate, I’m of Nordic heritage (mostly Norwegian; some Swedish), so Booth’s travelogue-analysis was of special interest to me. Booth has been compared to Bill Bryson, but his book is less interested in Bryson-like humorous anecdotes and more about compare-and-contrast: How does Scandinavia stack up in relation to the rest of the world? What makes it unique?

Yesterday, I watched a news report about the one Western country that seems to be going against the grain in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. That would be Sweden, which will not surprise anyone who reads this book. According to the news story, the Swedes are apparently shrugging their collective shoulders about the virus while everyone else is taking drastic measures.

Are the Swedes showing the rest of us how to deal with a pandemic, just as they aspire to lead the way on gender equality and immigration? Or are they a nation of oblivious fools?

The Swede in me would like to believe the former; the Norwegian in me fears the latter.

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